A silent night in Stars Hollow

So months and months ago — just when Logan moved to London, leaving Rory with the love rocket — he bought Rory a plane ticket to visit him over Christmas break. She did. Lorelai postponed all Christmas-related festivities and traditions until Rory’s return. They strung up lights, tried to get peppermint Christmas coffee, and were a bit obstinant about the fancy new stockings that Christopher introduced.

Still, they bought seven $1 Christmas trees (which is almost like the Gilmore Girls of Christmas past excess — doing things like ordering all the chicken dishes off the Chinese take-out menu).

The twist in this episode is that Luke asked Lorelai to write a character reference letter to help in his custody battle. Lorelai’s blocked. Sookie and Rory both have lame conversations with her about how this must be really hard for her. She hides the letter from Chris. Then she runs into Luke at the mall, and they exchange all kinds of made-up memories about Luke giving Rory monogrammed towels and unicorns for her birthday.

(Um, hello — he baked her a coffee cake for her 16th birthday — that’s the kind of guy that Luke has been — have these new writer’s not watched the show? Or am I just crabby because just before watching tonight’s episode, I watched an old episode and I know what Gilmore Girls once was?)

So, then Lorelai and Luke smile and share a short moment. At home, Lorelai writes a letter and takes it to the mail box. And from the previews for next week — Chris will find the hand-written drafts of the letter that Lorelai hid (but did not destroy) and will read about how Luke was like a father to her kid — and will scream at her, “Tell me you’re not still in love with him.”

I can’t have Chris and Lorelai break up. They’ve been married for five minutes. Something has to, at some point, work out for this woman. I just don’t want her to be divorced. Oh, and why no bling? Her last two fiances bought her diamonds — why just the simple gold band. Christopher is bank, but no new furniture, no diamond, and just nicer stockings?

In other news, Lane is ginormous — and Zach is very into parenthood. But Lane doesn’t seem to really want these babies. Because she feels like she got to be an independent human being for like five minutes. She suddenly went from a kid who had to sneak around to an overburdened mom. Why didn’t Rory visit Lane? Why didn’t Lane talk to Lorelai? She’s someone who could relate — she’s someone who never got to be herself until Rory left for Yale (thus she was freaked when she had that pregnancy scare back with Luke).

This episode had a lot of silence. There was actually a montage where we watched Lorelai try to write the letter. We’ve watched Lorelai clean out the fridge and have more fun. The thing that makes Gilmore Girls is all the talking — and semi-obscure smart chick references. In this episode folks didn’t seem like they had a lot to say. It was like they were forcing Lorelai to be a black-and-white movie star — and maybe that was an interesting acting exercise for her, but not for me.

You know what else was missing from this episode? The Grandparents. I wonder if they’re backing out of this series because the writing is lacking.

In good news: those Aerie Tuesday girls didn’t chime in with commentary. Or if they did, my DVR blessedly didn’t catch it.